


Echoes

by AnNee



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:10:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnNee/pseuds/AnNee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before, Brian Kinney had wanted to die before he turned thirty. He didn’t want to get old. Brian didn’t want to live one minute after he should be long dead. Now he would give anything to have another one</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

 

The bathroom is clean.  
  
Spotless, in fact. The shower stall is practically glowing and Brian doesn’t think he’s ever seen the corner counter that colour before. It's shocking only because he forgot that Justin actually knew where the bathroom cleaner was kept. _The little shit._  
  
Brian reaches out a hand from where he's leaning against the sink and runs his index finger slowly along the side of the basin. It comes away clean. But then, it always does, now.  
  
In the beginning, he used to wonder if dust was all he was. Just a shadow; a silent echo. He's still no closer to figuring it out, even though sitting around pondering philosophical thoughts is taking up a lot of his time nowadays.  
  
Through the mirror, he sees Justin hurry through the open bathroom door and turn slowly. Brian spins to face him, leaning back against the cold marble of the sink and holding up the offending digit, “You never cleaned a fucking bathroom in your life and you start _now_?”  
  
He had wanted to yell it, but it comes out more of a resigned mumble. Not that Justin would have listened regardless.  
  
He's sick of yelling anyway. That’s all he’d done in the beginning, yell. Shout and scream, for someone to see him, to answer him, to hear him, until his voice should have been sore. It hadn’t been. Nothing is ever sore now. He figures it's supposed to be a blessing, but Brian has never really been very good at counting those.  
  
Just as he expected, Justin doesn’t look. His gaze tracks the bathroom instead for any lotions or nick-knacks he’s missed.  
  
Justin is a lousy packer. He always has been. Last year, before he got sick, they’d all gone to Miami for Emmett’s birthday. Justin had written lists for days, on the back of his sketchpads, and left them lying around on counters and tables with things highlighted in obnoxious marker and suspicious looking squiggles. He still somehow managed to forget his sunglasses and spent the whole week stealing Brian’s.  
  
Justin had loved that trip. He’d told Brian he wanted to move there when they were done with New York. He said he wanted to open a gallery right on the beach and have Brian buy a yacht and name it _Sunshine_. When Brian had informed him that he’d sooner cut off his remaining ball than do anything as lesbionic, they’d spent the rest of the night getting deliriously drunk and thinking of alternative boat names so they were prepared for when they moved into their fictional future condo.  
  
Brian remembers the way Justin’s eyes had seemed ridiculously blue that night; shining like glass as they’d roared with giddy laughter on the floor of their $500 a night hotel room. Brian remembers being perfectly happy then. That probably should have been his first clue that things would swiftly go to shit.  
  
Brian had collapsed with stomach pains two weeks later.  
  
They were going to call the yacht _Filthy Oar_ and play dumb when they signed the registration papers.  
  
Behind him, Justin makes a satisfied hum, turns on his heel and leaves.  
  
Brian rolls his eyes at himself in the mirror and pays no more mind to the battery powered razor on the top shelf of the cabinet that he knows will never see a moving box.  
  
Justin’s fucking lists are always useless.  
  
He throws one more fleeting glance towards the mirror and shuffles slowly across the tiles and across the hall into the bedroom.  
  
It's a huge room, really, but that had been the point. When they’d first toured the apartment, Justin had gaped at the huge windows that covered the entire far wall and done a double take at the walk in closet. Brian had signed the papers on the way out, despite Justin’s haughty disapproval.  
  
 _“The bedroom’s bigger than the lounge, Brian.”_ He’d slapped a hand down over Brian’s wrist before he could curve his signature. _“It’s not practical.”_  
  
Brian remembers rolling his eyes and using the hand to pull him in, trapping him against their new kitchen counters _“When have we ever been practical, Sunshine?”_  
  
It looks smaller now, stripped almost bare and littered with boxes. The bed is still there though; with the same navy sheets as always. Justin hasn’t moved to change them. In fact, he’s never really moved to touch the bed at all, other than to stand over it for a while every night before returning to the couch.  
  
Brian remembers once, years ago, when he had first moved to New York and was still commuting back and forth a lot between offices, he had come home late one night to find Justin sleeping in a pile on the couch.  
  
 _“The bed’s too big on my own”_  
  
Brian had reminded him then that the bed must have seemed perfectly proportional to him in the two years they had spent in different states, but Justin had just cursed his lack of sentimentality.  
  
Justin can be stupid like that sometimes.  
  
Brian stands in the doorway for a minute, watching him, before he goes over and sits on the edge of the bed. Behind him, Justin continues to pull clothes out of the closet and roll them into messy heaps to stuff into boxes labelled _‘stuff_ ’ and _‘clothes’_ and _‘closet crap’_.  
  
Usually, it would infuriate Brian, but every time he feels his anger start to boil, he remembers he isn’t going to be the one to unpack it all again. He isn’t going to have to listen to Justin whine about how he fucking hates to iron.  
  
He isn’t going to see any of it at all.  
  
  
::::::  
  
  
  
Justin's moving.  
  
To somewhere Brian had missed. He knows it isn’t Pittsburgh, though. He knows because he’d witnessed the slinging match between him and his mother a couple of days ago, when boxes had started to appear and flight info was being scrawled on post-its and stuck to things.  
  
Back when it had first become remarkably apparent that he probably wasn’t going to get better, Brian had flown Melanie out to his NY Kinnetik office to get his paperwork in order. Justin was still refusing to acknowledge anything beyond a, yet undiscovered, miracle cure and spaced out every time Brian mentioned words like _‘will_ ’, or _‘deathbed’_ or _‘reality’_. Lindsay was still too jittery to talk to and had Gus to worry about, so he told Mel not to say anything quite yet, and made sure Ted sat in on the meeting, in case he forgot something important. He’d been doing that a lot by then.  
  
It was probably the weirdest moment of Brian’s life, that afternoon - planning his death over coffee and bagels with Smelly Melly and Theodore.  
  
His wing men; his little Grim Reapers.  
  
He hadn’t been worried, he remembers. Cynthia and Ted could have run the agency without him before now, if he was being honest, and Gus’ nest egg was already secure without his insurance payout. He had been certain the world would continue to spin quite effectively without him. Although he had little doubt it would be less of a place because of it.  
  
 _What about the apartment?_ Mel had asked. The pen in her hand shook for the first time that morning, while Ted had pretended to be occupied with a bagel/shmear project.  
  
Brian had just shrugged and averted his eyes. _”Tell him he can do whatever he wants with it.”_  
  
What he had wanted, Brian had found out only a few weeks ago, was to live like a hermit in it until he shrivelled up and died of old age and abstinence. If Brian had known that _then_ , he would have told Mel to sell it out from under the little fucker regardless.  
  
Debbie, _always Debbie_ , had been the one to step up after the first month had passed.  
  
Michael had glared at her pointedly as she’d laid her hand over Justin’s and told him that his mother had been looking at apartments for him back home. Really nice ones. With skylights, apparently; for his painting.  
  
When she’d only received the same glare Brian used to get when he suggested skipping Debbie’s annual Christmas dinner, she’d relented to the truth. _“Sunshine, it’s not good for you to stay here.”_  
  
She had shared a ‘mother knows best’ glance with Jennifer before surging ahead, _“All these memories everywhere. You have to move on. He wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”_  
  
From where he was rolling his eyes across the room next to Mikey, Brian decided he was getting really sick of people assuming what he would and wouldn’t have wanted. Justin had snapped after only fifteen minutes of prodding. He was really loosing his patience in grief, Brian thought. It wasn’t a good colour on him.  
  
“And what the fuck would he want for me, huh?” He’d barked, shoving the estate ads that his mother had shown him to the floor. “To move back to sunny fucking Pittsburgh and live out the rest of my life as a grieving widow?”  
  
Beside Brian, Michael hid a smile behind his sleeve. If he could have, Brian would have shoved him, because he knew damn well what his friend was thinking: _That’s probably exactly what he would have wanted, egotistical prick!_  
  
After Justin had stomped off to their bedroom and Debbie and Jen had regrouped and left, Mikey had searched him out. He was like that, his Mikey. Always picking up Brian’s slack. Always trailing behind him, picking up his messes and reaching out his hand. This time Brian trailed behind him as he tapped quietly on the bedroom door and poked his head in.  
  
Justin had been sitting in one of the bay windows, staring at the navy, untouched bed.  
  
 _“I’ve been in love with him since I was seventeen-years old,”_ Brian and Michael heard him whisper, as if neither of them had been there for the whole morbid event.  
  
 _“I don’t know how to do anything else.”_  
  
Michael hesitated near the door before going to sit in front of him on the edge of the bed. Brian smiled triumphantly as he settled on its mattress. At least it had seen some fucking action; even if it was just Mikey’s ass.  
  
Justin had stared at his hands, and Michael had stared at Justin and Brian chewed on his thumbnail and willed the two of them to get a fucking grip.  
  
 _“What am I going to do?”_  
  
The hell if Brian knew, so he waited for Mikey to tell Justin what Brian probably would have wanted him to do, but he never had.  
  
What Jennifer had wanted was for him to go home with them: _Just for a little bit._ Justin had refused, politely.  
  
If Brian could have, he’d have told Jennifer she was wasting her time. There was no moving him when he was like that: stoic stare, short words, sure hands. As it was, Brian just sat on the empty counter top and watched as Justin methodically folded old newspapers around silverware and listened to his mother shout and sob and beg for him to listen to reason.  
  
Brian was doing nothing but waste time these days. He figured Jennifer could join him, for an afternoon at least.  
  
He had felt bad for her though. Maybe because he hadn’t seen Jennifer Taylor that desperate and useless since she’d turned up on his doorstep and begged him to fuck some life back into her kid. He had saved Justin’s life then, she’d told him years later: Hers too. Brian wanted to tell her he felt pretty useless most days now, concerning her son.  
  
Brian hopes, distantly, that Justin is moving to Miami. To open a gallery on the beach and have some rich, sugar-daddy buy him a yacht but he knows he's kidding himself. Justin will probably never even visit Miami again now.  
  
Justin can be stupid like that, sometimes.  
  
  
:::::::  
  
  
His hair is longer; brushing the back of his neck again. The length Brian had liked to wind his fingers through and tug and twirl. He's wearing a blue shirt too, one that Brian had loved and his fingers suddenly itch to touch it.  
  
It's odd. Brian had thought that he would miss sex the most. The mere thought of going two days without any kind of release was always enough to send him hurtling towards the first warm body to prove to himself that, no, it was still there. He could still do it.  
  
It isn’t the sex that he misses, though. Not really. The urgent, tingling burn of arousal that he had revelled in before was absent now. Not gone, just…dampened. Now, he misses the contact most. Warm. Breath. Touch.  
  
He wants to touch Justin all the time. Brian finds it odd that that hasn’t changed.  
  
Letting out a resigned sigh, Brian swings his legs up onto the bed and settles back against the cushions.  
  
Justin is still across the room, emptying the closet he had secretly loved, however impractical it had supposedly been. Brian doesn’t remember anyone taking his stuff away, but someone must have, because Justin hasn’t packed any of it yet and there are only a few things left swinging on hangers. A couple pairs of khakis and a dark suit pressed and hung neatly. Brian watches Justin walk over and silently tug the khakis down, ignoring the suit as he slides the closet shut on his way out.  
  
Brian knows he won’t take it and that this time it will have nothing to do with lists or forgetfulness.  
  
It's the black one - Armani. Brian had bought it for him _sometime_ ago, for a show he had in Soho.  
  
He'd never gone to it though. Brian knows for sure, because when he’d watched Justin unzip it two weeks ago, the tags had still been on the left sleeve.  
  
It had been a Sunday. Brian remembers, because he had found it poetically ironic he’d be buried on a Sunday. He always had a particular fondness of them.  
  
He’d been born on a Sunday. He knows because his mother had taken relish to it when he’d been younger, _‘And the child who is born on the Sabbath day, is bonny and blithe and good and gay,_ ’ she’d tell him.  
  
He and Mikey used to pale at the word ‘gay’ and then laugh about it later. Everything was funny like that when you were fourteen.  
  
 _Hey Mikey, guess what ‘Tums’ is spelt backwards?_  
  
He doesn’t know what day Justin was born. He’d never thought to ask. He liked Sundays as much as Brian did though.  
  
Sunday mornings meant sleeping til noon. Brunch in the Village. Maybe a Museum or the park in the afternoon. Brian loathed the park, especially on weekends; with jig-zagging joggers and screaming children, but Justin claimed the Boat House looked whiter on Sundays, and he liked to watch for squirrels.  
  
Brian tries to remember which day he died, but everything before seems to blur and blend together until it's nothing but thoughts and memories and maybes, with a disjointed timeframe. He knows what had happened, vaguely, just not when and where exactly.  
  
He remembers needles, and drips. He remembers white sheets and bedpans. He remembers his bitter laughter at being foolish enough to think that he had finally put chemo and hair loss and vomit behind him.  
  
He doesn’t remember the pain. But then numbing that had always been Brian’s speciality.  
  
He thinks, hazily, he can remember people crying. Begging, praying, hideous sounds of desperation filtering through to him, half conscious and drugged to the eyeballs. He remembers falling asleep on warm, navy sheets and then waking up again later, different. No angels, no God, no burning brimstone. Exactly where he had been, just without existence, without being able to be heard, or touched, or seen.  
  
Without being anything at all, really, other than angry and stubborn and convinced that if he shouted loud enough, if he waved and jumped and screamed at everyone, it might change.  
  
It hadn’t, and Brian had started to think that maybe this was it. This was what his mother had tried to warn him about. This was Hell.  
  
It didn’t seem to matter to try and remember anything else after that.  
  
  
  
::::::::  
  
  
  
For the most part, Brian thinks, Justin held it together nicely. He's never done things by halves, so Brian had fully expected a grade-A queen-out at some point.  
  
When he had been sick, near the end, Brian remembers telling Justin that once he was gone, he should be prepared for Mikey’s wailing widow routine. Justin had smiled wryly from where he was laid out beside him and told Brian he was already shining up his bitch-slap hand to snap him out of it. Brain had laughed, he remembers, because that had been a rare occurrence those last few days.  
  
Mostly, though, he remembers staring straight at him, trying to bore the hidden meaning behind his words right into Justin’s brain. _Hold it together, Sunshine._  
  
He knows Justin heard him. Words were bullshit. They had always done better without them. _Don’t lose your head. Don’t let me do that to you._  
  
The queen-out hadn’t come. The closest Justin had come to one was the day after Brian had fallen asleep and woken up here, which was ironically no where at all.  
  
Brian had watched him raid the liquor cabinet and drain four of Brian’s bottles of vintage scotch. Justin was always a light weight on the good stuff and Brian was amusedly waiting for off-key warbling and a possible circus act before he remembered it wasn’t one of their Friday night blow-off sessions.  
  
Mikey appeared as Justin was smashing up Brian’s office: the $300 desk lamp crashing dangerously close to his best friend’s head as he screamed at Justin to _“stop it”_ because it _“wasn’t helping”_ and _“wouldn’t be what Brian would have wanted”._  
  
It hadn’t done anything and in the end, Michael had called Ben at whichever hotel they were staying at and they’d let Justin finish demolishing the contents of Brian’s dresser before pushing him towards the couch. Brian had slid down the opposite wall and watched Ben pull a blanket over him.  
  
Mikey had been sobbing in the kitchen. He had broken when Justin had screamed at him that he didn’t give a shit what Brian would have wanted. That he _hated_ Brian for dying. That he _hated_ him for leaving them like that.  
  
Brian had sat in the corner all night and listened to Justin’s sobs turn into sighs and then breathy snores. And in that moment, with Mikey red and blotchy and Zen Ben so morbid and Justin so fucking _broken_ , Brian had hated himself a little too.  
  
After that night, though, Justin seemed to remember his promise.  
  
He’d been brave, Brian thinks. But maybe that was just because everyone else had been such a fucking hassle in comparison. Michael was a fall down mess, blubbering over everything and the rest of them skittered around, petting Justin’s face and holding his hand and waiting for him to fall to pieces. Brian would have been heartedly embarrassed for all of them, had he actually been there.  
  
The truth is, Brian had had an idea of how it would probably be when he was gone. There’d be tears, funerals, grieving… maybe a tantrum or two. But that’s all he’d had: an idea. Because at the time, the fucking cancer had been quite enough to deal with, _thanks very much_ , and he didn’t really have the time or the passion to think about what everyone else would do with themselves once he kicked it. He certainly didn’t think for one minute it would be something he _should_ worry about. After all, he _should_ be gone. He _should_ be sipping fucking mimosas on a cloud somewhere with Judy and James Dean. He shouldn’t be stuck here with a front row ticket and an urge to vomit every time someone sobbed his name.  
  
Justin had managed to hold it together though: all Sunday morning.  
  
While he dressed, slowly, in the suit Brian had bought him, for the gallery they’d never go to.  
  
While he pushed aside Brian’s face cream to reach for the deodorant Brian always insisted smelled of toilet cleaner.  
  
While Debbie and Jen let themselves in and found him staring dry-eyed at the bed again.  
  
While Michael had curbed his hysterics long enough to steer him towards the door, babbling nonsensically about waiting cars and chosen sermons and caterers.  
  
Brian hadn’t tried to follow because he might have been a narcissistic asshole but there were some lows that even he wouldn’t stoop to. He didn’t want to see Gus in his tiny, black suit, looking sad and confused. He didn’t want to see Debbie throw dirt on another one of her boys. He didn’t want to see Justin stoic and numb because Brian had told him to be.  
  
He did kind of want to see what Emmett had dared to wear, but even that wasn’t enough for him to risk stepping out of the apartment.  
  
Later that night, still in his dark, black suit that Brian had bought him, Justin had come back, composed and alone and locked himself in the bathroom for four and a half hours.  
  
Brian had sat on the closed toilet and watched Justin slide down the door and cry until he puked in the sink. He _had_ looked hot, though. But then, Brian always had the best taste in suits.  
  
And men.  
  
  
  
::::::::  
  
  
Somewhere down the hall, a phone starts ringing and Brian hears Justin let out a sigh and move away to answer it. It was probably Daphne. Or Lindsay. Both had been taking it in turns to call on the hour, every hour, for the past two weeks.  
  
A few days after _it_ had happened, he had watched his apartment become the rent free establishment for the ‘Brian-Kinney-is-Dead self-help group’. Debbie, Lindsay, Jen, Daphne, Mikey, and Ben all crammed onto his $6000 cream, Italian sofa and buckled down to tackle the problem that they had sent for a _“lie down”_ , out of the way.  
  
The urgent meeting was called to recess by Debbie, _always_ Debbie, after Michael had told her what Justin had said the night he had lost his shit and thrown things. Brian had forgotten about it until then, actually. But then, he had always taken drunken Justin with a pinch of salt.  
  
The rest clearly didn’t have enough experience. Well, apart from Daphne, but Brian trusted her to call Bullshit on his behalf if need be.  
  
 _“He saved my life, you know”_ Justin had slurred to Ben that night, as Michael hovered on his other side trying to pry Brian’s Gucci shirt from his fingers. _“He saved me. And I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t do anything!”_  
  
Brian had been pressed up against the bedroom wall, watching them fall to pieces. Hating that Mikey was desperately trying to save a shirt that, realistically, would never be worn again. That Justin was crying over something that couldn’t be changed, couldn’t be helped.  
  
 _“I just stood there and did nothing!”_ Brian remembers Michael’s horrified gape and Ben’s soothing tones. _“I just stood there and watched him die!”_  
  
Mostly, Brian just remembers wanting to bitch slap some sense into all of them.  
  
Debbie had claimed Justin needed time. His mother had claimed he needed space. Daphne and Lindsay hadn’t let Brian down and simultaneously called Bullshit. Like the good hags they were, they announced they were checking in on Justin daily until he began re-functioning like a normal person or turned straight, whichever came first.  
  
Debbie had the sheer _gall_ to ask what they’d do if it was the latter.  
  
Debbie obviously hadn’t seen her little Sunshine take it up the ass.  
  
Michael had been too broken to offer much of anything, but Ben had probably said something Zen and profound on his behalf later. Brian wouldn’t know. He’d lost interest half way through and wandered off down the hall to where Justin was resting fully clothed on the spare bed, in the room next to theirs. It had dark blue walls and a video console rigged up for Gus.  
  
Justin hadn’t looked up and Brian lent against the wall next to the door for ten minutes watching him stare at the ceiling.  
  
Brian only realised once he was inside that the hushed chatter of secret trade-offs and strategy plans were being filtered in perfect audio down the hall. Justin didn’t seem to mind much, though, so Brian lay on the bed with him and helped him be quiet.  
  
 _You know they just worry_. Brian had told him quietly, as if he could hear him. As if it would make any difference.  
  
Words were bullshit, at times like this. Brian had always thought so, but he had wished then, that he could touch him just once. Pull him close and cover his ears and hide him away from their loving, persistent family, who were trying to organise what was left of his stupid, shattered life in their living room.  
  
They lay there for an hour while the jobs were quietly divvied and it had been decided that Jennifer would take this ‘shift’ and Daphne and Lindsay would take it in turns to call. Debbie lingered at the door to tell Justin his mother was going to stay there tonight. _Just in case, Sunshine._  
  
Justin hadn’t said anything back, but Brian had loudly wondered _‘In case of what?’_ A suicide attempt? Another shit fit? A resurrection?  
  
Debbie hadn’t answered, of course, but lent over, right through Brian, and brushed a wave of blond back from Justin’s stoic face with a gentle hand, telling him to stay strong; to hold on tight; to wait for it to get better.  
  
Once she’d gone, Brian had reached out and traced a finger slowly down the side of Justin’s face and pretended he could feel the wetness there. He knew Justin wouldn’t feel a thing and he’d long since stopped screaming and begging him to.  
  
 _You’d hate this._ Justin had whispered later, into the silence, probably not thinking for one second that Brian was lying right next to him agreeing with him wholeheartedly.  
  
He did hate it. He hated every second. He hated the crying and the planning and the mourning and the drama, but it didn’t change anything. Words were bullshit.  
  
They both knew that.  
  
  
:::::::::  
  
  
 _Before_ , Brian Kinney had wanted to die before he turned thirty.  
  
He had wanted to drive his expensive car right off the side of the highest peak and die a fiery, hero’s death. He didn’t want to get old.  
  
Before Gus, before Mikey, before blonds, and New York, and ice cream kisses, Brian didn’t want to live one minute after he should be long dead.  
  
Now he would give anything to have another one.  
  
He wants a hundred more years; a hundred more kisses; a hundred more fucks. He wants to see Gus grow up to be nothing like him. He wants to see Mikey be a grandfather. He wants to see Debbie finally pay off the diner.  
  
He wants Justin. More, probably, than he has ever wanted anything. He wants to tell him a hundred things that never really seemed important before.  
  
Like how he secretly thinks his stodgy chicken casserole is fucking delicious, even though Brian always claimed it looked like kindergarten paste. Like how he knows Justin secretly _hates_ James Dean, but Ti-voes all his old movies just to watch Brian mouth along.  
  
Like how he's the best sex Brian ever had. The best artist New York has ever seen. The bravest little fucker Brian has ever met. Like how walking up to that streetlight, a hundred years ago, was the best thing Brian has ever done. Like how he's wrong. He _did_ save Brian’s life. Maybe not in the way he wanted, but in every way that mattered.  
  
Brian wants everything, really, but even he knows it's greedy and pointless to want anything at all now.  
  
  
:::::::  
  
  
  
“I told you a hundred times how to work that fucking thermostat.”  
  
Brian is becoming partial to their conversations. He pretends he's still there, slouched on their couch after work, shooting the shit about new accounts, or TV, or Debbie’s new colour scheme. With Justin pretending to listen while watching his show, half heartedly grunting after his bitchy remarks, or nodding absently at boring office talk.  
  
“And fucking eat something, you look like a waif.”  
  
Beside him, Justin shifts under his twelve ton of scratchy blankets and flicks the TV over tiredly.  
  
The furnace had exploded earlier that afternoon and Justin, of course, had been too bull-headed to call the Super. Brian had stood over him as he poked and prodded it and screamed _‘check the fucking filter, you halfwit!_ ’ for twenty minutes before Justin threw a wrench at the gage and called Uncle on its ass.  
  
It doesn’t really matter much in the long run. The green post-it stuck to the bedroom mirror says he's leaving tomorrow. 11.35 am. Flight 786. Brian still doesn’t know where to.  
  
As usual his fucking lists are lacking in detail and stamina.  
  
He knows it's to a gallery somewhere though. Probably one of those that had been head hunting him last year, desperate for new talent and hot youth. Brian secretly hopes it's the one in LA. Justin has always loved LA. And he’ll probably never have to learn how to work a furnace.  
  
“You need to tell Debbie that neon pink makes her chins look fat.”  
  
The TV clicks off with a bored grunt but Justin makes no move to get up.  
  
Their conversations aren’t that much different than before, actually, when Brian thinks about it.  
  
  
:::::::::  
  
  
Brian knows he should probably be feeling some sick sort of panic as he watches Justin hand the last of the boxes over to the U-haul guys the next morning.  
  
They’ve been there all morning, lugging and packing and lifting. It probably would have been a turn on if any of them had been remotely fuck-able. Only one of them had been young and kind of hot and gave Justin the once over before he left. He was blond, with a handful of freckles over the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t really Justin’s type though, and the fact that Brian knows Justin wouldn’t have fucked him even if he _had_ had sex in the past six months eased the tight knot of guilt that twists at Brian’s gut every time Justin jerks off and shouts Brian’s name.  
  
He’ll do it eventually, Brian knows. He just has to get back into the swing of things. Justin is a fast little learner when he wants to be, with things like that. Brian should fucking know.  
  
There had been hundreds of boxes taken out that morning. Only one of them was labelled 'Brian' in thick black marker, in Justin’s neat box print. Brian had watched him pack it up the night before, with stupid, useless tid bits of Brian’s old life that he probably wouldn’t have even thought to keep if they had moved away like this a year ago.  
  
A couple of photos. An old sketch pad. A fucking cowry shell bracelet that had seen better days. Brian watched him tape it up with the same careful precision he would use for shading sketches sometimes. He hadn’t cried though, not even a sniffle, which gives Brian just a little bit of hope that maybe the worst of it is over now.  
  
Maybe these last few months had been his penance. To watch what he had done to them. To watch what he’d left behind, without being able to tell them that he was fine, really, just dead and invisible and yelling at them to get over him already. To cry and move on, like he’d made them all swear they would.  
  
So Brian doesn’t feel sick. He doesn’t even feel sad, as he watches Justin triple check all the lights and scowl at the thermostat on his way back down the hall.  
  
Brian thinks that maybe, somewhere, he might just be trapped stoic until Justin can let go. _Maybe_ , on some level, Brian is just waiting to be sure he’ll be okay without him before he can move on himself. _Maybe_ the afterlife is just pure, utter bullshit.  
  
Brian thinks he likes that last option better. It gives him some kind of twisted superiority over his mother, wherever the bitch is, because she certainly isn’t here with him. Brian has learned to take pleasure in small blessings like that.  
  
Blessings that he probably would never have allowed himself before, through all the screaming and wondering and worrying and the _‘why me’s._  
  
Brian had died, he has come to realise during one of his more philosophical wonderings, because he’d had a life. And it had been a good one too, mostly, filled with loud mouthed, red headed mothers and loyal, extraordinary best friends and beautiful, trusting faces that called him _Dada_.  
  
And Justin. _Always_ Justin.  
  
Brian watches him now, as he checks his pocket for his keys, wallet, ticket number, spinning slowly to take a grand sweep of the empty room. Brian stands where the coffee table used to be and watches Justin look right through him.  
  
He's going to leave, Brian knows. Somewhere Brian can’t follow this time. He's going to leave him there with the dust, and shadows, and echoes, where he belongs.  
  
Across the room, Justin takes a breath and walks to the door, only turning back to whisper into the clear, bare confines of the place they used to live in once, used to fuck, used to plan the rest of their lives.  
  
 _“See ya, Brian.”_  
  
He's going to go just like Brian had told him to. He's going to go and be brilliant and live the rest of his life. And Brian only hopes it will be as fucking good as his has been.  
  
 _“See ya, Sunshine.”_   


End file.
